FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ILLINOIS THEATRE CENTER - PAGE 3

`Playing With Fire (After Frankenstein)' at Illinois Theatre Center: Playwright Barbara Field's decade-old moral meditation on the Mary Shelley creature, created in a ghoulish laboratory experiment from recycled human parts, resonates more succinctly with each passing cyber-age announcement of computers with artificial intelligence and offspring cloned in test tubes. "You gave so much thought to creation, but not to the moment after creation," the disillusioned creature cries out in confronting his maker, Dr. Frankenstein, on a polar ice cap where he has been banished by a fearful society.

The Tenth Man : Written several decades ago when audiences were perhaps more interested in weighty dramas about religious issues, Paddy Chayefsky's "The Tenth Man" is a long and ponderous affair set in a storefront synagogue. With a plot involving the exorcism of a suspected demon and a blossoming romance between a young girl and an unhappy lawyer, this is one of those heartfelt plays that builds its heavy-handed message at an interminably slow pace. The author of the film "Network," Chayevsky wrote well and the show is not without some interesting moments--for anyone unfamiliar with Orthodox Judaism, this play provides a very comprehensive introduction.

A Broadway hit in 1955, William Inge's "Bus Stop" is now largely the domain of college and community theaters thanks to its simple scenic requirement (a Kansas diner) and character-driven plot. Whether this ode to Midwestern life and loneliness warrants such continual attention is debatable. But for those who have a weakness for the play, the Illinois Theatre Center production in Park Forest is a capable, if somewhat bland, effort. The onslaught of a blizzard turns a 20-minute rest stop at Grace's Diner into an all-night affair for passengers on a bus out of Kansas City.

Etel Billig of Park Forest serves as the producing director for the Illinois Theatre Center, whose home stage is in the Park Forest Library. She's also an actress and teaches in the Illinois Theatre Center's drama school. Q. How long have you been in theater, and do you remember your first time on stage? A. Sure, I was 6 and started in school things. But I've worked professionally since I was 16 and played one of the children in a production of "Our Lady of Fatima." Q. How did you come from the East Coast to the Chicago area?

Even though folks of mature years are the demographic that most loyally supports such theater troupes as the suburban Illinois Theatre Center, few fields are as age-discriminatory as the musical theater. With lead roles invariably reserved for shallow ingenues, actors a little beyond middle-age usually find themselves playing minor and embittered figures of comic relief, assuming they make it to the stage at all. And unless one is watching original material, it's rare indeed for the over-65 set to be included in huge production numbers.

Etel Billig, now the producing director of Illinois Theatre Center in Park Forest, traveled to Moscow as part of a cultural exchange in 1989 and immersed herself in Soviet theater, taking in 18 plays in the course of several weeks. One work, titled "Theme and Variations," by the Russian writer Samuil Alyoshin, stood out above all the others. "I didn't think a translation existed and I had no idea whether the rights would ever be available," Billig says today. "But I thought to myself then that I would love to do this play someday at the Illinois Theatre Center."

Heidi Kettenring, the original Nessarose in the Chicago company of "Wicked," returns on Feb. 12. But the iconic Barbara Robertson remains as Mme. Morrible, because Rondi Reed, who had been expected to return with Kettenring, remains busy on Broadway in "August: Osage County." Also, "Wicked" has a new block of tickets on sale Friday for April 29 to July 27. ... Tickets go on sale Sunday to "Kooza," the touring Cirque du Soleil tent show that will be pitched next to the United Center this summer, beginning June 26. ... Inda Craig-Galvan will star in the solo show "Neat," by the actress/playwright Charlayne Woodard.

In the 29 years since Etel Billig and her late husband, Steven, founded the Illinois Theatre Center, Billig has directed or acted in 100 plays, including directing "Mercy of a Storm," which opened Friday. "When we opened in 1976, people predicted we would last two years," said the longtime Park Forest resident. "But we knew differently." The theater has been home to about 230 plays, many of the early ones performed in the basement of the Park Forest library. Billig attributes the theater's longevity to the professional actors who drive great distances to perform and to an audience which appreciates the quality of work done there.

Village trustees adopted a resolution Monday for a 2-cent tax increase for the Park Forest Library. The total proposed 1997 tax levy represents a 5 percent increase over the prior year, Village Manager Janet Muchnik said. The additional 2-cent tax on property in the village would be used for library repairs and maintenance. Basement walls are cracked and need fixing. Also, the outside stairs leading to the Illinois Theatre Center require repairs, and the telephone system should be replaced, officials said.